Edward Arthur Thompson

Edward Arthur Thompson ( May 22nd, 1914 in Waterford, Ireland, † January 1, 1994 in Nottingham ) was a native of Ireland historian.

Life

Thompson's ancestors were Irish- Scottish descent. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where he also taught from 1939 to 1941. In 1941, he moved to Swansea in 1945 to London and 1948 at the University of Nottingham, where he taught Ancient History in 1979 until his retirement.

Thompson's research focus was the late antiquity and especially the history of the Great Migration. His work in this area have long been considered essential and some are still of some importance. Thompson, who dealt with the late antiquity long before other Anglo-American historians who wrote, among other things, works to Ammianus Marcellinus, Attila, to the Goths in Gaul and Hispania, and the end of the Western Roman Empire. Thompson, who has always seen itself as a political person, since the 1940s, was a Marxist, but resigned in 1956 in protest against the invasion of Soviet and allied troops in Hungary from the Communist Party of Great Britain from. The theory of historical materialism influenced his work about in the sense that Thompson social and economic aspects more than other researchers took into account and social changes, for example during the Great Migration, paid great attention.

He was the first professor at the University of Nottingham, since 1964 a Fellow of the British Academy. In the same year he married his second wife Hazel Casken, with whom he had a daughter; by his first wife, Thelma Phelps, with whom he had two children, he had been divorced in 1958. Thompson was also a member and chairman of the editorial board of the Nottingham Medieval Studies, for which he wrote several articles. He also worked on the important Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, for which he wrote articles mainly Germanic personalities.

Writings (selection )

  • The historical work of Ammianus Marcellinus. CUP, Cambridge 1947.
  • A History of Attila and the Huns. ( The People of Europe). Blackwell Books, Oxford 1996, ISBN 0-631-15899-5 ( Nachdr d ed London 1948).
  • The Early Germans. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1965.
  • The Goths in Spain. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 0-19-814271-4 ( Nachdr d ed Oxford 1969).
  • Romans and Barbarians. University Press, Madison, Wisc. 2002, ISBN 0-299-08700- X ( Nachdr d ed Madison, 1982).
  • Who was Saint Patrick? Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1985, ISBN 0-85115-428- X.
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